tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post6084085653744450740..comments2015-08-02T03:10:39.933-04:00Comments on In the Middle: What do you do with a slovenly Slavoj?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://plus.google.com/110433684739546897626noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-36641327436759441242007-07-25T08:33:00.000-04:002007-07-25T08:33:00.000-04:00"Why are cinema-lovers so obsessed with gaffes, sm..."Why are cinema-lovers so obsessed with gaffes, small mistakes....Is not our pleasure in discovering gaffes a kind of revenge of the ego against our unconscious beliefs?" TPV 425 n37.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-13272345660974383712007-07-24T21:11:00.000-04:002007-07-24T21:11:00.000-04:00Just found another one! Parallax View, 219, "like ...Just found another one! <BR/><BR/>Parallax View, 219, "like a Magrittean hand drawing the hand, that, in its turn draws the first hand."<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.worldofescher.com/gallery/A13.html" REL="nofollow">Escher.</A><BR/><BR/>Clearly Zizek didn't go to Evergreen.<BR/><BR/>Michael OR: I'm buying Truth of Zizek tomorrow. Thanks for recommending it again. Seems essential.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-69772963748919614672007-07-23T20:59:00.000-04:002007-07-23T20:59:00.000-04:00Fuck, how does one keep up with you guys? I go awa...Fuck, how does one keep up with you guys? I go away for a few days and there is so much to digest and ruminate upon. Thanks first to EJ for the introduction to her special journal issue. I'm flattered by its acknowledgment of my work and energized by it.<BR/><BR/>I've just got back from the very large Cultural Studies Now conference in London--perhaps the biggest and most politicized conference of its type for some time. I talked about Readings' university in ruins and Bersani's "Sociability and Cruising" and how Queer Theory needs to cruise, "be-with" CS and that this can disrupt the kind of business we do in the university. Among many other things in my 12 minutes. So, I found your intro immensely helpful as a jump-off point. Or a dive right in point even.<BR/><BR/>I love Michael Uebel's Zizek stories. I have a few too but I'm writing a review of Richard Stamp and Paul Bowman's The Truth of Zizek (I'm recommending it on ITM again--get it and read it because it is the first book ever to really take SZ on) and you really must read Zizek's long and seriously irate response to the book's contributors ("With defenders like these who needs attackers?) where he seeks to refute some of the claims the authors (and Karl in his post) make about his sloppiness only to simply go ahead and do each of the things they say he does. And perhaps this is Zizek taking the piss but the sense of hurt in the response is very, very earnest. So, I'm not sure. <BR/><BR/>Finally, I heard Rosi Braidotti give a keynote at the weekend in which she referred to SZ as "a pale, histrionic version of Lacan".Michael O'Rourkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03110210128389911666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41684615190049151212007-07-21T15:01:00.000-04:002007-07-21T15:01:00.000-04:00I like to think of Zizek as, not a stream of consc...I like to think of Zizek as, not a stream of consciousness cultural critic, but as a stream of stuttering consciousness cultural critic. There's no system there, and sometimes no facts, but, pace Gertrude Stein, there *is* a "there" there. I love Zizek's unqualified enthusiasm for everything--it's ridiculous, but also endearing. It would likely be a little stupid to use him as model of a certain kind of ethical critique, although he works pretty hard to make you think he *is* an ethical critic. You grab insights from him where and when you can, and disregard the rest, if you want to let him get away with it. But ultimately, without turning figures like Zizek into some kind of critico-philosophical "theism" [i.e., to say "Zizeckian" this and that], they can be appreciated for their flamboyance, without which, much of what is interesting about his thought might have never been said. He can be an egomaniac, and still be right *some* of the time.Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-80314222686329180752007-07-21T10:29:00.000-04:002007-07-21T10:29:00.000-04:00Jeffrey:Thanks for pointing that out re: Bhabha. I...Jeffrey:<BR/><BR/>Thanks for pointing that out re: Bhabha. I suppose because I've never sat down with the book and gone all the way through it--I pick it up here and there--I haven't noticed that problem. It's odd: it's not as though Bhabha is so prolific, and the book has gone through, I presume, so many printings that I would expect he'd want to intervene at some point to clean it up.<BR/><BR/>Monrodriguez:<BR/><BR/>thanks for that link and the points. SZ gets at one of my points much better than I do, namely, that demanding that he watch the films is, at least in part, a precritical demand. Boring, if you will. I'm glad to see him turning his errors into critical hay.<BR/><BR/>Why? Because ultimately I don't want to see this conversation proceed as 'sure, SZ's slovenly, but he 'moves the ball'/he's a trickster/he is my secret sharer in wanting épater l'académie.' Let's lose the <I>but</I> to think through his errors as something other than errors, something other than symptoms of haste/expansiveness/unwillingness to hire a copy editor (after all, the careful, correct English of the our professional writing is a second language to all of us). Is it possible to get us past the 'attack' v. 'defense' mode?<BR/><BR/>We're smart enough to do something more interesting. And I'd like to think we can respect SZ enough to damn him if he's a fuckup, but to first expect that he's doing something interesting <I>with</I> his own fuckupedness.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-19635287028449120542007-07-21T07:37:00.000-04:002007-07-21T07:37:00.000-04:00http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kXQzJD8JCUDo we ne...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kXQzJD8JCU<BR/><BR/>Do we need the ultimate truth (or the ultimate truth of methodology, rigour and politeness)? Cannot we take them as those mechanisms of truth Foucault talked about ? <BR/><BR/>Shouldn't it be better considered a rethoric problem: Does Zizek convince ? Do his arguments make the ball (of thought) move ?<BR/><BR/>I find his style deep stimulating (from psychoanalysis this would be taken sexually, don't care), the same way your weblog.monrodriguezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15502396435325358778noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49348572068906961172007-07-21T06:31:00.000-04:002007-07-21T06:31:00.000-04:00One more thing, then I'm done defending a person w...One more thing, then I'm done defending a person who writes too much and too quickly: Bhabha's Location of Culture isn't just dense, it has weird cut and paste errors as well -- not as finished a product as it needed to be. As to Mr Z: could any of the problem be that he's not a native English speaker? His polyglot capabilities are enviable.J J Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-57125462329191747972007-07-21T05:45:00.000-04:002007-07-21T05:45:00.000-04:00Karl: "...eerily, at the very moment I was writin...Karl: "<I>...eerily, at the very moment I was writing this, Adam Roberts was writing this. The Corsican Brothers? Or Dead Ringers?</I>"<BR/><BR/>Hah! Let's play Dead Ringers, why not. You can be Jeremy Irons, and I'll be ... um, Jeremy Irons.<BR/><BR/>When that film came out I was doing my PhD at Cambridge, and took my then girlfriend to see it; at a delicate and early stage of our relationship. Has there ever been a <I>worse</I> date-movie, in the history of movies?<BR/><BR/>I was going to segue from that obvious 'error' into error more generally. But it's such a huge issue that I barely know where to start.Adam Roberts Projecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10001572970456425902noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-51764641749743661232007-07-21T00:52:00.000-04:002007-07-21T00:52:00.000-04:00His sloppiness I see as more an assertion of his t...<I>His sloppiness I see as more an assertion of his tricksterish ego than a lack of fact-checking. </I><BR/><BR/>Not sure I agree with the arrangement of these two elements. I'm inclined to see a causal relationship, although in which direction I don't know. <BR/><BR/>Perhaps there's an ongoing tribute to Lacan and his medieval manuscript (see Holsinger <I>Premodern Condition</I>)? Still more surpassing Lacan at his own game?<BR/><BR/>Out of curiosity, and from your assembled expertise, who are the other philosophical/theoretical tricksters? Dan mentions Freud. Jeffrey mentions Grosz, but from what little I know (I've read only <I>Volatile Bodies</I>) I don't think of her as a trickster. So I wonder: any women?Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-31227050335243759622007-07-21T00:41:00.000-04:002007-07-21T00:41:00.000-04:00Ever read Homi Bhabha's Location of Culture?Yup. B...<I>Ever read Homi Bhabha's Location of Culture?</I><BR/><BR/>Yup. But impenetrability isn't the same thing as sloppiness. Not necessarily.<BR/><BR/>The short version here is that Zizek often gets the things wrong that I know; by doing so, he doesn't exactly convince me that he knows the things well that I don't know. It's not <I>that hard</I> to get these things right. It might mean writing a bit more slowly; it might be correcting matters in second editions, in one's cut and pasting, and so forth. And this isn't a matter of confusing Odo for Odilo of Cluny (as Goldhammer did in one of his translations, iirc: sloppy, and <I>perhaps</I> a niggling mistake, but here an indication that perhaps a medievalist should have gone over his work); with Zizek, it's a matter of getting things wrong that are very, very easy to get right. As for the comment on Microsoft word as a "language," well, that's the sort of error that's not niggling: any way I try to make sense of it, it's gibberish.<BR/><BR/>I should say, however, that it would be <I>boring</I> (natch) to demand Zizek watch the movies he talks about. I don't want to assume that watching a film necessarily would give Zizek a less mediated, more authentic, more <I>honest</I> experience than just working with what he's picked up here and there.<BR/><BR/>More to say tomorrow.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-71667921867009962282007-07-20T20:43:00.000-04:002007-07-20T20:43:00.000-04:00Lots of very smart people are sloppy writers and c...Lots of very smart people are sloppy writers and could truly use a good fact checker as well as an extra copyeditor. Ever read Homi Bhabha's Location of Culture? Elizabeth Grosz, too, is a brilliant thinker who is also prone to employing the wrong word, making typos, and repeating herself via use of the cut and paste function.<BR/><BR/>We medievalists seem especially galled by niggling mistakes -- probably because those who trained us inculcated such obsessiveness. More than that: we work in a discipline that is at worst both timid *and* obsessive, terrified of error because no one beats brows like another medievalist.J J Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-82475417846082632172007-07-20T19:25:00.000-04:002007-07-20T19:25:00.000-04:00I always thought of Zizek as being a bit like Hend...I always thought of Zizek as being a bit like Hendrix. Always going for the brilliant insight rather that technical expertise.Station Agenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07763305706443562427noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41393346426803774832007-07-20T17:59:00.000-04:002007-07-20T17:59:00.000-04:00Zizek's sloppiness is legendary--and it's a legend...Zizek's sloppiness is legendary--and it's a legend he himself helped to propagate. When I had lunch with him back in like 96, I brought up the subject of his footnotes (and lack thereof). He began to explain that most of the notes in his earliest (pre-English) work were completely fabricated. He also explained that he quotes and writes about films he's never seen. Of course, I laughed my ass off, and at that time I was so enamored of Zizek that I couldn't have cared less that be made stuff up. <BR/><BR/>At that same lunch, he also shared with us that when he was in analysis in Paris, he only ever made stuff up (dreams, fantasies, etc.) to throw the analysts off.<BR/><BR/>Zizek is (and I don't use the usual verb "has" here) an immense ego. His sloppiness I see as more an assertion of his tricksterish ego than a lack of fact-checking. <BR/><BR/>PS I have many other Zizek stories, including sharing a train ride to NYC with him in which we discussed his weight and a story involving a strip club dj, zizek, and a gaggle of sycophantic grad students.<BR/><BR/>dein, MUHerr Ubelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-23595838174358466582007-07-20T17:51:00.000-04:002007-07-20T17:51:00.000-04:00oh yeah, i think Freud's Leonardo Da Vinci and a m...oh yeah, i think Freud's Leonardo Da Vinci and a memory of his childhood a heck of a read with huge glaring fact-checking error. just as an example of this somewhere else.dan remeinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21743972832470315772007-07-20T17:25:00.000-04:002007-07-20T17:25:00.000-04:00cucyes nicola. truly. But Zizek also attacks phi...cucyes nicola. truly. But Zizek also attacks philosphy as a reader of everything. In this way he is something (in his own sloppy way) of an autodidact. We recall someone like Auerbach's ability to say things like "to my knowledge, this set of blah blah x or y rhetorical devices have never been used to this effect in all of the literature of romantic languages..." that, of course, is because there was such a tidy understanding of what _was_ that entire corpus. <BR/><BR/>Zizek's corpus itself is more sloppy. Obviously his most narrowly defined one (as that picture shows swimmingly!) but also his body of what he reads and thinks. He needs to move so quickly, in a book like _the puppet and the dwarf_, from st. Paul to a blockbuster movie, that I cannot help if certain missed facts are absolutely unavoidable if the sort of _effeticivity_ that Zizek's work has is to actually be written and though. How can we possibly do this without being sort of a sloppy autodidact? I personally and more apt to say: damnit, get it right! Do the reading! Know the material! Do the hard work! But maybe this is a personal problem. And life may not be "a personal thing" (Deleuze). <BR/><BR/>So, I am saying that another thing in the equation here is this term: _effectivity_. Its one that I think lurks behind and drives the productin of quite a lot of the theory I read and _like_ and want to _read_ actively and productively. (I include Derrida in this without question: keeping the game going is one way of counting the cost of the work: asking, ok, I could make these observations in this essay, but why should I? to what _effect_?). I think it is a cateogry that becomes more valid the more one thinks of reading theory as reading simply another variaty of a "high" literary production (fiction, poetry, theory, drama, film, etc.). This practice would raise the stakes both for the "creative" writing and the "critical" or "theoretical" writing as they are commonly sequestered. Perhaps this is part of what was behind my comments on a possible "poetics" for "doing/writing" history last week. I have posted before also on this blog with the following idea of E. Said in mind, from an essay (in _Relfections on Exile_) about Vico: that, (paraphrased) according to Vico, what matters to the historian is not what evidence is there, but what evidence you can make up.dan remeinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-66350704883927031482007-07-20T12:10:00.000-04:002007-07-20T12:10:00.000-04:00We love Zizek because he returns philosophy to its...We love Zizek because he returns philosophy to its home in the <I>ad hoc</I>, where our today can be whoever's whenever, not because he speaks the truth, but because he truly speaks.Nicola Masciandarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.com